“I can tell you what happened,” he said. “Just at the moment when evil and defiance were mounting in a blaze of triumph in his soul, he saw God. There is nothing else that can account for it. If he had seen Satan himself, would the terror that smote soul and body asunder have come to him? He might have fallen in a trance of adoration, but what cause would there have been for terror? There was cause only for ecstasy. But was that ecstasy which you and I saw on his face? I tell you it was the despair of final defeat. He was at the mercy of Him whom he had made his enemy. As I raised my hands in consecration, God came.” Was it the infection only of that mute panic in the priest’s eyes that caused Colin’s heart to beat suddenly small and quick, and his hands to grow cold? “That occurred to me,” he said. There was a moment’s silence. The clock ticked, and just outside the window a thrush sang. Colin made a violent effort with himself. He attacked his fear, driving it before him. “We’re rotten Satanists, you and I,” he said. “We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. As I tell you, that idea did occur to me, but I was, without knowing it, overwrought last night and excited. I, too, when I saw that terror in his face, thought that the sight of God alone, merciful and pitiful, could have caused it, and I thought so even more strongly when, half an hour later, I looked at his face again, and saw it was quiet and serene. But I needn’t go into that. What I intend to do now and for ever from this moment, is to put that notion away.” “It doesn’t matter if you put it away or not,” said the priest. “It is true.” Colin made that silent, effortless relaxation, that opening of his heart to the power that he loved and served, which is the essence of prayer. He had just to remain like that, till it began to tingle and throb within him, till he was charged and brimming with it. Soon he spoke. “Of course the ways of God are inscrutable,” he observed, “but I don’t take the slightest interest in them. Of course He’ll win in the end somehow--it’s such a score to be Omnipotent. But it isn’t the end yet. I’m going to have a good long run for my money first. Besides, the notion is quite illogical: it doesn’t hold water. You were the principal culprit last night, weren’t you? Why, in the name of justice, weren’t you bagged instead of Vincenzo?” “I wish to God I had been,” said the priest. “Now will you explain why?” “Because I am in hell.” “This pleasant room?” asked Colin. The priest got up. “Can’t you understand?” he said. “Vincenzo has been conquered: he has made his submission. He saw the truth of what he denied and mocked: it was made real to him, in some manner inscrutable to us. And if that was the end of life, it was the end of hell also.” “Oh, I thought hell was eternal,” said Colin.